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Comment of the week

"It's the end of the first quarter, and you're already busing out the 'Max Bacon is sizzling' line? As fun a name as that is, there's not really too many directions you can go with it, especially not in the positive. 'We're at the half, and Max Bacon is killing the visitors like high sodium and cholesterol!' 'Third Quarter is up, and Max Bacon is hot like a grease fire!' 'The game is up, and if one thing's for certain, it's that Central wishes they were kosher right now ... or something ... Bacon, right?'" --pugfuggly

Main content:

In the last full week of August, attention spans and expectations are low. Time for a week-long ‘theme’ series to fill up the queue without too much annoying work.

Apartment 3-G, 8/26/14

Oh hey it’s Tommie’s cavalcade of boyfriends, going back to 2007! Sure, Lu Ann and Margo get all the attention, but it’s boring old Tommie who gets all the action. Here’s the Swain o’ the Day:

Apartment 3-G (panel), 2/4/07

This is Neil Flynn, a small-time community-theatre lothario who played a one-shot role in 2007, mostly to humiliate IT Security Studmuffin Gary, shown in silent lamentation there on the right.

Neil kissed Tommie once, and was never her “boyfriend” in any reasonable sense of the word. So “arrogant, cruel, and a cheater” is apparently Tommiespeak for “I totally let him kiss me — and no proposal, not one! Can you believe it? I would be a grandmother today if not for that bastard — the nerve of the man!”

Crankshaft, 8/26/14

All week long, bitter old Ed Crankshaft daydreams about delivering his incoherent petty spite globally, at industrial scale. But in a run of bad luck, his bus is beset by gremlins, hijacked by convicts, overrun with snakes, and crashlands on a mysterious tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean.

Mary Worth wraps up the “Bad Doctor” loose end. Say, have you noticed that all Mary ever does at the hospital is peer at blank sheets of paper and eavesdrop on gossip? It’s almost as though patient care somehow isn’t her top priority. Go figure.

And wouldn’t you just love to see Nurse Bluehair on your medical team? Sure, it’s all grins watching her try to work out the relationship between “the ones you don’t suspect” and “the ones you don’t bother to keep an eye on” until you see her standing at the foot of your bed with a catheter, an I.V., an oxygen cannula, and a baffled look on her face.

O Fortuna! The great Wheel of Curtis turns again to “Curtis is humiliated trying on clothes.” But the store is shown as completely empty except at the exact moment the dressing-room door opens — so where did all these people come from? Is it some kind of flash-mob event? What sort of person would show up for something like that? Have the authorities been notified?

I have to say that with the departure of Brenda Starr, Diane Wilkins is my favorite woman in the comics. Sorry, Blondie — we had some great times.

Ill-content with his future as a sullen dick, Billy aspires to be a sullen ignorant dick. Live the dream, Billy!

Baby Blues, 3/14/11

Uh-oh — looks like Hammie’s been bitten by a radioactive spider. Lot of that going around. Can’t wait for the musical!

Marvin, 3/14/11

Marvin, perfected. You folks can stop now.

Judge Parker, 3/14/11

Marketing executive — of course. Alan’s Blackberry® also brings news that his two-week Wonder Novel has received a Pulitzer Prize, and Sam’s been appointed Attorney General and Papal Nuncio. Judge Parker pumps its characters so full of gas it’s like watching Ally McBeal staged by Macy’s parade balloons.

Dick Tracy, 3/14/11

Whoa — what the hell is that thing growing out of Dick’s left wrist? And are we headed for four months of “It’s morning out there”/”I’m gonna call you, Tracy”? Time will tell.

Hey, I’m outta here! Josh will return on Monday with your COTW, and chew back into the comics on Tuesday. It’s been a fun week — thanks!